Europe in uproar over massive U.S. industrial spying
By John
Catalinotto
If you thought the 45-year era of imperialist Cold-War
aggression was sliding quietly into retirement, then you
probably haven't heard yet about Echelon.
A spy system started in the early 1970s, Echelon was a
cooperative effort of the highly secret National Security
Agency here in the U.S. with its counterparts in Britain,
Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
By applying artificial intelligence to information gathered
from satellites and from the ground--obtained by intercepting
foreign phone calls, faxes and email messages--Echelon was
supposedly aimed at protecting the "security" of the four
English-dominant countries in the imperialist world.
Echelon is now a major issue in Europe because all that
technical expertise developed to bring down socialist countries
is now being poured into inter-imperialist rivalry--when it
isn't being used to undermine oppressed peoples trying to exert
some independence.
A report issued by the European Parliament on Feb. 23
complained that Echelon had been turned to a new use. The
system has been used to collect trade information to give big
businesses based in these four countries an advantage over
their rivals in Europe.
According to this report, the system "enables the countries
using it to obtain significant economic information and, hence,
to secure a leading position on the commercial markets."
The system intercepts "billions of messages per hour," said
Duncan Campbell, the report's principal author, in Brussels.
"We are not talking about a trivial thing here."
U.S. officials, including Treasury Secretary James Rubin,
denied any wrongdoing. He even refused to admit Echeolon
existed. But European politicians complained that Echelon was
neither trivial nor benign.
Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel accused the U.S.,
Britain and their partners of organizing "large-scale espionage
operations in order to reinforce their economic interests to
the detriment of Belgium and other European countries."
The European Parliament report claims that in two cases
Echelon intercepts helped U.S.-based companies competing with
European rivals to get the deals.
"The Anglo-Saxon Echelon eavesdropping network constitutes a
serious infringement on national security and on the freedoms
of all French people," said Rene Galy-Dejean, a French
legislator.
The capitalists' idea of peace in the post-Soviet world is
to feel freer to use the weapons of the Cold War against each
other. That war was supposed to have had noble aims--freedom,
democracy, personal liberty. But in fact it was a war of a
predatory ruling class against countries that had broken away
from capitalism. Now the U.S. bourgeoisie wants to use its
military edge developed during the Cold War to do what
capitalists do best: beat down the competition and squeeze the
most profits out of the workers, wherever they may be.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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